Operation Cinderella

by Hope Tarr

  His folks were working class people, his big brother Ray the first college graduate either side of the family had seen in some time. Both he and Ross had gotten through school with the help of academic scholarships and a patchwork of odd and part-time jobs. Physical labor was hell on the hands but it also built muscle and character. In Ross’s opinion, more people should try it. Once he got Sam straightened out to where he no longer felt the need to hover like a hawk, he meant to make sure she got some sort of weekend work; otherwise she’d continue believing that money grew on trees—and that she lived in some kind of eternally enchanted forest.

  “Thanks,” she said, straightening and taking a step back. “The trick is to keep looking straight ahead, never down. Once you second guess yourself, you’re lost.”

  “Sounds like good advice,” he mused aloud. “Maybe you should write a book.”

  She hesitated, looking suddenly, adorably shy. “Oh, I don’t think I’d have a whole big book in me.”

  “You might be surprised.” Adrift in her gray-blue gaze, he reached for the glass, slopping vodka over the rim. Feeling like a klutz, he shook out his wet hand. “As you can see, I’d never make it beyond busboy.”

  A cocktail napkin materialized in her hand. With brisk efficiency, she wiped up the spillage and stepped back.

  He managed to bring the glass to his lips, this time without incident, and took a sip. “This is so good I might think you’d been a bartender.”

  She laughed, the sound reminding him of the wind chimes on his mother’s porch. “Not hardly. I just looked the recipe up online and followed it.”

  He dropped his gaze to her empty hands. “Aren’t you joining me?”

  “Well, no, I’m working.” She hesitated, and then admitted, “I don’t have much of a head for alcohol.”

  Of course she wasn’t about to booze it up. Coming from a small town, she’d probably grown up sipping sweet tea at church socials. It didn’t help him that her unspoiled disposition and solid, old school values came packaged in the body of a Victoria’s Secret model.

  A buzzer going off drew him back down to Planet Earth.

  “That’s the oven timer,” she said, turning to the door. “Dinner’s ready. Why don’t you go and make yourself comfortable in the dining room?”

  Ross shook his head. “I’ve never actually seen a single meal come out of that high-end oven. No chance I’m missing out on that.” Mrs. Alvarez had left the prepared food in the refrigerator for later reheating.

  She bit her bottom lip. “In that case, maybe you could open the wine. I’m afraid I don’t have much practice and your corkscrew is a little complicated.”

  Ross didn’t recall his corkscrew as being anything special but, happy to be of use, he said, “You’ve got it.”

  He bypassed the breakfast nook and stepped inside the kitchen, fully expecting to be greeted by some degree of culinary chaos. On those rare occasions when his ex had been moved to do more than microwave, their kitchen had resembled the day after an atomic explosion. To his surprise, though, every surface was wiped clean. Not just clean but spotless. The copper pots and pans all hung from their wall hooks and there wasn’t so much as a dirty spoon left out.

  Salivating, he sniffed the beef-scented air. “Your roast smells amazing.”

  She smiled. “Let’s just hope it tastes amazing as well. It’s my mother’s recipe with rosemary and pearl onions, and I made parsley buttered potatoes and baby peas to go with it—oh, and biscuits, of course.”

  He felt his jaw drop. “You baked?”

  At her casual nod, he walked over to the oven and opened the door partway. A metal tray of big, fluffy, home-baked biscuits was set inside to warm. Biscuits like his mother made.

  “There’s dessert, too, but it’s a surprise.” Her impish grin did funny, fluttery things to his insides.

  “That’s okay. I like surprises.” I like you, he was tempted to add, but instead he held out his hands and said, “Put me to work. Where’s that wine that needs opening?”

  …

  Ross pushed his chair back from the table and laid a hand on his stomach, which somehow managed the trick of still looking washboard flat despite the heaping plate of food he’d put away. “You keep feeding me like this, and I’m going to have to renew my gym membership.”

  Macie swallowed a snort. Who did he think he was kidding? A Type A personality like his probably drove him to work out every day at his office gym.

  She stuck on a saccharin smile and summoned what her mother might say in such a situation. “After a hard day at work, you deserve to come home to a good meal.” To wash the bitter taste from her mouth, she allowed herself a sip of the merlot he’d insisted on pouring her.

  The light lines bracketing his mouth relaxed into a smile. She’d seen that smile twice before, the first time on his website and then again at last week’s lunch when his daughter had said something that had both exasperated and amused him. But this was the first time it was trained on her, and the full force of it, combined with the focused intensity of those very blue eyes, made her feel as though she’d logged in too many minutes on the tanning bed—disoriented, dry-mouthed, and lightheaded enough to make her glad that she was sitting down.

  “You’re obviously a young woman who has her priorities in place.” Picking up his wineglass, he swirled the ruby liquid around, the picture of male satisfaction.

  Could it be this easy? Was simpering submission really what men wanted from a woman? The depressing thought had her casting a longing look at Ross’s unfinished martini, wondering if she could get away with siphoning off the final few sips once he left.

  “Thank you, Dr. Mannon, I appreciate that, even if there are some who might see it as a sexist statement.”

  He shrugged as if other people’s opinions were the very least of his concern. “I believe men and women are different, fundamentally and biologically. If some people want to call that sexism, let them go right ahead.”

  She bristled. “So in other words, ‘vive la difference’?”

  He nodded approvingly. “The men your age must be fools not to have snapped you up by now. A beautiful, accomplished young woman with your values is hard to come by.”

  “I suppose I just haven’t met the right man yet,” she trilled, feeling as if all the oxygen had been vacuumed from the room. Had he really just called her beautiful? Putting off pondering that until later, she glanced pointedly at his plate, which was scraped so clean she could see the cactus pattern at its center, and started up. “If you’re finished, I’ll just clear these dishes and serve dessert.”

  To her surprise, he rose as well. “Let me help.”

  Ross Mannon offering to do dishes? Seriously? “Thanks, but I’ll do it. You’ve worked all day.”

  “What do you call all this?” He spread his hands, indicating the remains of the roast and the half-empty bowls and platters. “Looks like work to me.” His sincere smile had her wishing she’d actually baked those melt-in-your mouth biscuits and peeled a potato or two.

  “Okay then, but just set the plates in the sink. I’ll put them in the dishwasher later; otherwise you’ll spoil the surprise.”

  “Deal. Only I’ll make the coffee, too.”

  Macie hesitated. “Great, I have the filter ready to go. All you need to do is add two cups of water and hit start.”

  “I can manage that,” he said, following her into the kitchen.

  Inside, she grabbed an oven mitt and took out her secret weapon, Stefanie’s peach cobbler. Per Stef’s instructions, she’d kept the dish warm and loosely covered with aluminum foil. Doing her best to ignore Mannon working at the sink beside her, she set the bubbling pan down on a stove burner and carefully peeled back the foil. Steam rose, the fragrance of sugar-baked peaches filling the kitchen, a mouthwatering olfactory memory from her childhood. Cutting into the thick top crust, she dished up two generous servings into the bowls she’d set out, and then added a scoop of Häagen-Dazs vanilla bean ice cream at
op each.

  “Hmm,” he said, pausing from pouring the brewed coffee into mugs. “Is that—?”

  “Peach cobbler,” she answered. Bypassing him, she carried the bowls back out to the table. “I hope you like peaches,” she said, well knowing he did.

  Thoroughly researching one’s subject in advance was a cardinal rule of good reporting. A quick Google search on Mannon’s family in Texas had brought up a ton of trivia. Apparently his mother’s peach pie had taken the Lamar County first-place blue ribbon nearly every year for the past thirty.

  He set the coffees down but stayed standing. Holding out her chair, he waited for her to settle in before resuming his own seat. Even knowing what an old school gentleman he was, facing his flawless manners felt…unsettling.

  His eyes lit and he answered with a question of his own. “You sure you’re not psychic?”

  Startled, she dropped her napkin. “Psychic? Why do you say that?” God, paranoid much?

  “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been partial to anything with peaches—peach ice cream, peach preserves, peach pie, and especially peach cobbler.” The grin he gave told her he meant it, that he wasn’t just being nice, and she relaxed, for a moment taking genuine pride in having pleased him, an absurdity given her circumstances, as well as dangerous.

  Forcing back the feeling, she picked up her fork and punched into the crust. “I would have guessed apple.” The sarcasm slipped out unbidden. Shit! She cast a quick glance at Ross’s face, searching for signs of fall-out, but his smile held steady.

  “Never much cared for baked apples.” He dropped his voice and added, “Besides, apple pie started out as British.”

  She let out a laugh, a real one this time. “‘As British as apple pie’ doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?”

  “No, it doesn’t,” he admitted, smiling.

  Though she despised his politics, really everything he stood for, there was no denying that, one-on-one, Ross Mannon was an exceedingly likeable man.

  He turned his attention back to his dessert and forked up a healthy bite. Chewing, he closed his eyes. The sublime look on his face was the kind usually reserved for someone who’d just won the lottery or had incredible sex. Watching him, Macie felt her mouth watering.

  He opened his eyes, and she quickly dropped her ogling gaze to her ignored dessert. “This would give my momma a run for her next county fair ribbon, but promise you won’t ever let on to her I said so.”

  Macie heartily doubted she would ever have the occasion to meet Mannon’s “momma,” but all the same, it was one promise she could honestly make him. “I’ll take your confession to the grave.”

  The next few minutes were silent except for plate scraping. Picking at her portion, Macie used the lull to regroup. She’d had almost two hours solo with her quarry and so far she hadn’t gleaned anything of value. Once Sam returned tomorrow, it was hard to say when she’d get him alone again.

  He pushed his emptied bowl aside. “I stand by what I said earlier. Someday you’re going to make some lucky man a gem of a wife.”

  She sent him a syrupy smile, thinking he’d just handed her the segue she needed to steer the interview to more intimate terrain. “Thank you, what a nice compliment. Being a wife and mother is my…dearest wish.” Greatest nightmare. “But first I’m considering going back to school for my Master’s,” she added, though in reality going anywhere close to a classroom was nowhere in her thoughts.

  He nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Education is important and you still have plenty of time for a family.”

  “I suppose so, but graduate school’s such a big commitment, I want to be sure. I saw from your website bio that you were at UNT for almost ten years. If you don’t mind my asking, did you take some time off?”

  A doctorate in the social sciences typically involved a four-year undergraduate degree followed by a minimum of four years of graduate work; the latter included the requisite classes, master’s thesis, doctoral comprehensive exam, and then the grand finale, the doctoral dissertation. Of course many students took longer to finish—from what Macie had seen, grad school was more of a marathon than a sprint—but still, she would have pegged Mannon for one of the few to finish in an even eight.

  His facial muscles tensed ever so slightly. A rookie might have missed it, but Macie had been interviewing subjects since her high school newspaper days. “I blew my knee out in the last quarter of the Homecoming game. That pretty much nixed my football career, not to mention my athletic scholarship.”

  Pressing her advantage, she asked, “Is that when you decided to pursue a career in sociology?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Try road construction.”

  Road construction, was he putting her on? Then again, maybe he wasn’t. She glanced down at his hands, the knuckles shiny with scars.

  “You’re surprised.”

  “A little,” she admitted, recognizing it wasn’t really a question. “It’s just that, well, you’ve become so prominent, a national figure.”

  He held out his hands and turned them palms up. It wasn’t only the tops that had suffered. Thick, raised flesh, the ghost of what must have been some truly wicked calluses, banded the underside of the knuckles. A white scar zigzagged through the right thumb.

  “Much of U.S. 271 was repaired with these two hands. I still have the calluses to show for it. To this day I get a kick out of driving and pointing out the stretches I worked on.”

  Staring down, Macie felt her face flushing. A similar heat pooled in her lower belly. Either the air conditioning had suddenly broken, or the bastard was turning her on.

  He dropped his hands under the table. “A good half of the guys on my construction crew were former cons. Some of them became my buddies and later my research subjects. Most were from rural working class church-going families, not all that different from mine. The similarities between us got me curious. What are the drivers that bring a basically good, God-fearing person so low that he’ll commit a stupid, in some cases heinous, crime?”

  Fascinated, Macie asked, “What did you find?” She’d meant to at least skim his dissertation but things had moved so quickly she hadn’t had time.

  “It wasn’t income, race, or ethnicity, or whether or not you were a first generation American versus a tenth that made the difference. Having a relative who’d been imprisoned was a minor influencer but the big explanation, the single variable that explained almost forty percent of the behavioral variance, was family structure.”

  “Family structure?”

  He nodded. “It boiled down to whether you’d grown up with two parents at home, or one.”

  “Let me guess, the children of single parents were more likely to become criminals?’ she said, working double time to smooth any edge from her tone.

  Expression sober, he nodded again. “Unfortunately, yes. That’s why I worry so much about Samantha.”

  He looked so sincerely, earnestly upset that suddenly it was really hard—impossible—to write him off as just another conservative pig. Still, she couldn’t resist adding, “Teenage angst to criminal act seems like a pretty big leap.”

  He shrugged and blew out a breath. “Maybe or maybe not. Back in New York, Sam shoplifted. It was a crap charm bracelet not worth twenty bucks, and she had more than enough cash on her to pay for it, yet she chose to steal it.” His gaze latched onto hers. “Sam shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of my screw ups.”

  The sudden stab of sympathy she felt for him was unwelcome yet irrefutable. “You’re being awfully hard on yourself.”

  Whoa, where had that come from? She’d come here to dismantle the media machine that was Ross Mannon, not to comfort. Bringing the Mighty Mannon low was Operation Cinderella’s primary directive. And yet as hard as he was on others, it seemed he was ten times harder on himself. Macie didn’t want to, but she couldn’t help respecting him for that. More than respect him, she felt for him—a dangerous headspace for someone in her position.

&nb
sp; He set his jaw. “I’ve spent the last few years being a more or less absentee father, content with talking to Samantha for our requisite five minutes on the phone every night and getting her for either Thanksgiving or Christmas and one month in the summer. But that’s not really parenting, and if I didn’t have my own study results to show it, I’d have my gut.” He raised desperate, searching eyes to her face, and as much as Macie wanted to look away, somehow she couldn’t. “That’s the big reason I brought you here, Ms. Gray. Not to cook meals and keep house and run errands, although having those tasks taken care of will be a relief, but because I need help in building a bridge to my daughter. I’m not so sure who she is right now, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same about me. I can’t lose my girl, Miss Gray, I just can’t.”

  Macie shook her head. Her throat felt suddenly, suspiciously tight. “You’re not going to lose her.”

  He held out his right hand, a hand that just moments before had seemed the key to unlocking her personal Pandora’s Box of fantasies. “With you on my side, Miss Gray, for the first time in weeks, I honestly believe that.”

  Chapter Five

  Francesca’s call saying she was in town came as a welcome surprise. Meeting for lunch would be a golden opportunity to catch up and compare notes on Sam, or so Ross figured. Even if they hadn’t been coping with a kid in crisis, he would have sincerely looked forward to seeing her. Their divorce was ancient history. Once they’d ceased being warring spouses, they’d fallen back into being friends with fair ease.

  The trendy Dupont Circle restaurant wouldn’t have been his pick, but as usual Frannie knew her own mind. Also as usual, he was the first to arrive. Taking possession of the table he’d reserved, he flipped open his phone where her text message waited. As he’d expected, she was running late but on her way. He went ahead and ordered their drinks, a glass of pinot grigio for her and a Coors for him. He was halfway through his beer when he spotted her by the hostess stand, a vision of haute couture elegance in a lime suit that caught the color of her almond-shaped eyes. He lifted a hand and flagged her over.